​Off Hand

Short bow usage tips:

trick shot- bounces an arrow between multiple foes, watch it when you only want to engage a single target since trick arrow has large bounce range

cluster bomb- fires an explosive arrow and if you press 2 again this framents into several smaller ones, time the detonation properly to hit multiple foes, don't detonate for high damage against a single foe

disabling shot- use initiative to evade and fire a crippling shot whilst evading, outstanding for kiting (hiting melee enemies and moving just out of their range everytime) tough melee enemies.

choking gas- fires a toxic cloud into an area that deals high amounts of poison damage, short lived effect though.

infiltrators arrow- shadow steps you to a foe and blinds them, great for when you have a melee wepon as your secondary weapon class.

Tips for effective thief use:

The thief in Guild wars 2 moreso than any other class relies heavily on movement. You will find that many, many thief skills and traits somehow incorporate either stealth, evading or both. this is a powerful tool for you since it means that as a thief you can dodge more than twice whilst doing damage at the same time. Also vital to the thief are combo's created through clever use of the initiative system, a brief example here for when using a pistol with off hand dagger against a melee foe:

1. press the 1 key to use vital shot on your foe, this bleeds them and causes lots of daamge before they even get to you. keep attacking until you see melee enemies raise their weapon.

2. use shadow strike with the 4 key to dodge their attack whilst dealing damage, ensure there is lots of room to get out of the way since this moves you back at least 6m from the target

3. normal enemies are often dead by this point but for ones that outlevel you or have lots of HP just rinse and repeat, ensuring that they do not tether back and recover all their HP (move too far away from a monster's initial location and they will return there and fully recover)

Now for the short bow there is also an effective little strategy though this is rather more difficult to pull off due to the timing and need to manage the skills. the advantage is that ypu can easily take multiple foes if you execute this properly:

1. press the 1 key to use trick shot and bounce an arrow between multiple foes, they will of course agro but many melee foes tend to be a tad slow, exploit this.

2. when they are about 4m from you fire cluster bomb with the 2 key slightly in front of them. when the flaming arrow apears in view again after going up off scren press 2 again to fragment the arrow and hit all enemies, do not press 2 again against a sigle target unless you missed them (depending on when you press 2, cluster bomb will cover a very large area, compensating for misses)

3. use choking gas with the 4 key when they are 2m from you and shoot it with yourself in th emiddle of the aiming ring. this will just last long enough for them to have to run through it and get poisoned

4.use disabling shot with the 3 key on the closest enemy to you and dodge its attack if you let the bad guys get too close, otherwise you just create more distance between you. they will take a second or two to figure out what just happened during which you hit them some more with the fast firing trick shot

this strategy is particularly useful when that monster you thought you could take suddenly invites friends to the party and the proverbial shite hits the proverbial fan.